I’ve always loved a fresh-fruit summer cobbler, even when called a buckle, crumble, crisp, Betty, or slump(!), but thought of them as a lot of work—or at least exceeding my “too much work” threshold—to be thought of as “convenient” or “fast.” No longer. This recipe is proving to be pretty fast, flexible (We are nothing if not flexible at Dad’s Recipe Box.), and reliable—almost resistant—to abuse. I’ve found a version that claims to be even simpler, but it doesn’t quite have the jazz that this one does.
Finding ourselves with some leftover fruit— two medium apples and two medium pears—we thought a good test of our new favorite dessert recipe would be to substitute these for fresh peaches. I’m going for canned peaches next. In the end, we could have used another pear or apple, but the taste was fantastic. I inadvertently over-baked the cobbler, so got caramelly sugar around the edges and a well-done, abundantly cakey crust, but this is all good, right?
This time, I also corrected an earlier mistake (I guess it was a mistake.) and instead of adding the milk to the baking dish just before cooking, I added the milk to the dry batter mix, per the actual recipe. The bottom line is that either method (I’m choosing to call these “methods.”) works just fine, apparently. In fact, the whole recipe forgives a lot of mistakes, substitutions, and “method” experimentation. Right up my alley.
Fresh peach cobbler
Equipment
- 1 9×13 glass baking dish
Ingredients
- 4 cups peaches Peel and cut up fresh peaches to the size you like best, ranging from a fruit cocktail dice to wedges.
- 3/4 cup sugar These days, I only use turbinado sugar, if I'm not using some other sweetener.
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 6 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup AP flour
- 1 cup sugar These days, I only use turbinado sugar, if I'm not using some other sweetener.
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Gently cook peaches, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp salt in a medium saucepan, med-low heat until sugar is disolved and peaches are fully softened and combined. Then, remove heat and set aside.
- Cut up cold butter into 1/4" cubes. Distribute these around the bottom of the 9×13 pan. Place into oven until just melted.
- In a bowl, thoroughly whisk together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Pour the mixture into the pan, Mix with butter and spread evenly.
- Gently spoon the peaches over the batter. Spread carefully. Sprinkle cinnamon. Don't be stingy because the cinnamon will disappear into the batter.
- Bake for 40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temp, with ice cream, whipped cream, or even heavy whipping cream. Enjoy!
- Leftovers keep and retain goodness in the fridge for a week.
